joshroby.com

I make books & games & things.

Browser Games

Grams likes to talk about how the world used to be, with running water and cars and airplanes and all that. That's not the world you ever knew.

You live in a little town huddling in the midst of a wasteland. There's never enough of what's needed, and usually too much of what's not. There are a few scraggely roads towards the horizon that nobody ever takes.

You figure: there's other towns out there. They must need things, and have things, and maybe if somebody travels the road, they could help meet those needs. Maybe things could get better.

You've got a donkey cart. Your friend says they'll join you to see what's out there.

What will you find Down the Phoenix Road?

Explore and Rebuild a Shattered World

Down the Phoenix Road combines two of my favorite things in computer games: exploring a map and making little pretend people happy. You start the game trading between isolated communities via a single donkey cart and slowly build your way to a civilization-rebuilding trading network.

This is a single-player browser game, heavy on strategic forward thinking and long-range planning.

Free to Play

Click now to play Down the Phoenix Road.

You can also support the game on Patreon by clicking on the Support button.

Free to Play

For the 2017 Procedural Generation Code Jam, AKA #procjam, I created a Map Generator which creates world maps and then a simplistic global history of civilization.

This is not so much a game as a toy; you adjust a couple sliders, hit go, and then watch helplessly as civilizations develop and then kill each other.

The half-baked idea behind it is that one could use the output as a gaming world or inspiration for worldbuilding in fiction. The actual result is so much of a firehouse of procedurally-generated data that it's hard to sort through it all. But it does look pretty...

Free to Play

You are the master of the dungeon, and you have a problem. All these heroes keep coming in and dumping all their trash and then dying. Now another group of heroes have arrived, and you have an idea. Maybe you can get them to pick up after all their predecessors.

Slide rows and columns of dungeon rooms around, opening up passages for the heroes to collect all the golden crap that other heroes have left behind. Once the heroes have cleared a level of all this stupid treasure, you open up the stairs to the next level.

Your minions will probably get in the way. That's okay, you've got more.

Free to Play

In this very under-construction game, you take on the role of citizens of a beautiful, cosmopolitain fantasy city who rise up against the tyranny of the despotic Ogre King. It's a tactical roleplaying game, which means you mostly move little characters around on a map to stage little battles.

There isn't much here yet -- one and a half levels -- but I'm doing a lot of backend work to make creating levels as easy as possible going forward.

Free to Play

Phorex is a very rough work-in-progress attempting to build a "4X" game in javascript. Instead of the usual four Xs with their focus on exploitation and genocide, though, I aim to use my own: "eXplore - eXtend - eXchange - eXalt."

Free to Play

Complete Tabletop Games

"Mister Hastings, direct the batteries to take aim on the battleship and inform the engine room we will need full light and full steam. It's time to show these pirates what for!"

Steampunk Space Opera

The Solar Powers ply the ether of the Greatest Sea in steam-powered ships, protecting their colonies and trading posts on distant planets. None is greater than the British Empire -- and none has more to lose. Join the Royal Astronomical Navy and protect the rights and prosperity of the greatest nation on earth.

God save the Queen!

Roleplaying with Character

Full Light, Full Steam is a steampunk space opera roleplaying game with a strong emphasis on character.

Point-Buy Character Creation allows you to create any flavor of naval officer that takes your fancy, from hotshot fighter pilots to gruff, hardscrabble captains to upperclass engineering chiefs who rose by nepotism and haven't the faintest idea how anything on the ship actually works.

The game's Thematic Batteries mechanic places character at the center of play, both in terms of roleplay as well as creating adventures that bring those characters to life.

The Spoils system guides players in highlighting each other's strengths and weaknesses, making characterization happen all around the table throughout the game.

This is a complete roleplaying game, ready-to-play, in a single volume. The game includes sample characters and a sample adventure, so can be played without any prep whatsoever. Or you can use the powerful customization tools to create your own Full Light, Full Steam campaign set on a ship, station, or port of your own design.

Pay What You Want

Click now to see Full Light, Full Steam Digital Edition as a pay-what-you-want download at DriveThruRPG.com.

Have you ever had Alexander Hamilton wind up your clockwork power armor, then jumped out of Thomas Paine's ornithopter, and landed in the middle of the Battle of Yorktown to punch General Cornwallis in the face?

No?

Well... would you like to?

Freedom and Badassery

Sons of Liberty is a roleplaying game like no other. Take on the role of the Founding Fathers to kick ass and take names for truth, justice, and the American way in the only Roleplaying Game of Freedom and Badassery.

The game's fast-paced card mechanics ensure high-action madness and revolutionary heroics. If you are playing Benjamin Franklin and you aren't swinging an electrified kite over your head to clear the streets of redcoats, then you are playing it wrong.

This is the kind of roleplaying game where you have to call a break to catch your breath.

Brass Tacks

The game works best for four to six players (including the Tory player GM-like role).

The basic game setting, Arcade Mode, pits a handful of Founding Fathers against a dastardly plot, which usually takes two to three hours of madcap action to defeat.

Campaign Mode strings multiple levels together to tell the madcap story of the entire American Revolution. Progress through the three stages of the Revolution, swapping out characters (and players) as you like, until you win your freedom... or seal your country's doom.

Versus Mode allows two players to face off after the American Revolution when the Founding Fathers must battle each other to determine how best to govern their fledgling nation. Two players, one hour, zero prep.

Pay What You Want

Click now to see Sons of Liberty Digital Edition as a Pay-What-You-Want download at DriveThruRPG.com.

Ten years ago, the powers of Earth and their many solar colonies erupted into vicious, system-wide war. With terrible weapons at their disposal, both sides reduced every planet and moon to irradiated dustballs. Years of mass starvation and deprivation later, survivors strain out a living by scavenging what remains on derelict ships, stations, and bases. We, the "heirs" of Earth, have become vultures of the vast, lonely void. We pick over the carrion of a golden age of plenty, when Humanity had the luxury of building whatever we desired.

I'm a scrapper--a salvage expert, if you want to be polite, but I answer to void vulture, scavvy, kender, station-stripper, magpie, even shitpicker. I draw the line at "junk monkey," though, so watch it. My mates and I board half-destroyed orbital stations, weapons platforms, anything that has some glimmer on it. We bust open the doors, tackle remnant security measures, and plunder whatever's left on the hulk. Sometimes, folks or...things take up residence in these old bones, so we deal with them, too.

Our townships, the people we do this for, never ask questions. They need our salvage to keep flying, eating, and breathing. Maybe someday, if we get enough provisions, we can boost our way to the colonies in Alpha Centauri. Between you, me, and this bottle, though, that's pie-in-the-sky bullshit, a bedtime story to let the kiddies sleep at night. I'll be pretty damn happy if we knock over a planetoid and set ourselves up for the rest of our miserable lives, not have to keep diving in the black. Girl's gotta dream.

Void Vultures is a fast-paced, tactical game of killing space monsters and taking their space stuff. It is powered by the Rulsleit system, a pick-up-and-play set of simple rules. Void Vultures plays in three to four hours for three to seven players.

This Pay-What-You-Want bundle includes the core Ruls of the Void, adventure supplement Derelicts of the Void, setting expansion Horrors of the Void, mecha expansion Dreadnoughts of the Void, and adventure The Lost Expedition.

Pay What You Want

Click now to see Void Vultures Digital Edition as a Pay-What-You-Want download at DriveThruRPG.com.

There is a whole lot happening in Verdigris Valley, the borderlands between the Kingdom of Kotalia and the high steppes of the Pashuan tribes. There is a bandit queen, an invading chieftain, a love triangle, an arrogant frontier lord, a vengeful wife, and a grumpy old farmer. Oh yes. And a terrible beast called the Broodmother. All of whom are about to go through the Vicious Crucible.

Print&Play

The Vicious Crucible series provides complete games of print-and-play materials that require absolutely no prep to put into play. You get:

six pregenerated player characters

a complicated, dangerous situation to dump them in

a map of the locale

basic rules for handling any kind of conflict

special rules for this particular Vicious Crucible

There's also a set of cardstock minis that you can print, cut out, and glue together if you get particularly ambitious and/or crafty.

Free Download

The Eburnean Tower has stood for centuries as a symbol of arcane learning, sorcerous power, and the dominion of man over magic. Tonight all that will be challenged. Rivals, saboteurs, and the Tower's own ruthless students all threaten this bastion of scholarship and arcane power. Something has got to give, and there is no way to know what will survive this Vicious Crucible.

Print&Play

The Vicious Crucible series provides complete games of print-and-play materials that require absolutely no prep to put into play. You get:

six pregenerated player characters

a complicated, dangerous situation to dump them in

a map of the locale

basic rules for handling any kind of conflict

special rules for this particular Vicious Crucible

There's also a set of cardstock minis that you can print, cut out, and glue together if you get particularly ambitious and/or crafty.

Free Download

The wealthy city of Villa Argentate is not having a good day. The tax that maintains its charter has gone missing. The new captain of the guard is still getting used to her job. Traders, gangsters, and priests brawl in the streets over tangled conspiracies and accusations no one seems able to unravel. And the duke has just begun bombarding the walls. The entire city is about to go through a Vicious Crucible.

Print&Play

The Vicious Crucible series provides complete games of print-and-play materials that require absolutely no prep to put into play. You get:

six pregenerated player characters

a complicated, dangerous situation to dump them in

a map of the locale

basic rules for handling any kind of conflict

special rules for this particular Vicious Crucible

There's also a set of cardstock minis that you can print, cut out, and glue together if you get particularly ambitious and/or crafty.

Free Download

Based on the ten-years-running superhero soap opera Smallville, this game mixes the peanut butter of superpowers with the chocolate of teen drama. Fight badguys, go to prom, discover terrible conspiracies, contemplate coming out of the closet to your closest friends (who might be, say, an alien and a robot).

I was a contributor to this project.

Out of Print

Sadly, Smallville Roleplaying is no longer available through retail channels. Click to see the Cortex+ Hacker's Guide at DrivethruRPG, which presents the Smallville rules as "Cortex+ Drama."

Print&Play

This booklet is a complete game in which you play members of an exploratory expedition into unknown territory. What you are exploring is up to you--you can be Age of Sail conquistadors in the New World, space explorers testing a new planet for viability as a colony, or something even stranger, like wizards exploring an eldritch realm of magic.

The game plays in one sitting of about three to four hours. Two to six players can play.

Free Download

Click now to download Conquer the Horizon for free!

Expansions and Sourcebooks

"In those days we were young and proud; we thought we could learn all there was to know of the River and its mysteries. Looking back, I cannot imagine how we could have been so foolish, for the River is vast and deep. No man may find all of its secrets, and the price for the few that we did catch was far higher than I wanted to pay.

"Come now, follow this path and find the truth for yourself. You will see a world gone mad with terror and brutality, and the whimpering end of all things. But, if you persevere to the end, you may also see the dawning of hope, and the birth of what must be. Now is the time of troubles, and now is the time of heroes."

-- Words of Thomas, The Knight of Stars

Adrift on the River of Dream is the core sourcebook of spirituality, magic and dream for Tribe 8. Inside, Weavers and Players alike will find all the information they need to run spiritual and mystical campaigns, as well as new rules and extensive information on Synthesis, Sundering, Dreaming, Technosmithing, Ritual, Spirits and the River of Dream. Adrift of the River of Dream includes:

Extensive guidelines for using, weaving and understanding Synthesis;

A cosmography of the River of Dream, including the various Orbs and Spheres;

Rules and guidelines for making rituals, Dreaming and Spirits a major part of a cycle;

New information on Guides, Heartstones and the interaction of the Z'bri and the Great Architecture;

Many new groups and locations;

Eight new Aspects, two new Technosmithing formulae, a dozen new rituals and three new Sundering Aspects;

"The winds have become much cooler as of late. Although we should be experiencing the warm winds of summer, all I can feel is the chill bite of death. If one looks to the north, past the smoldering ruins of Bazaar, you can see dark storm-laced clouds gathering. When the northern winds blow, I can smell the sweat of war and faintly hear the sound of metal against bone.

"While we continue arguing with the outcasts, the stirrings of war surround me. My sleep has been haunted by the voices of the Dead. Something is terribly wrong. Blood is calling for Blood. The Liberation is not over."

-- Sarah Verkin, Yagan Old One

Following the destruction of Vimary, an uneasy peace is trembling between the Nation and the Eighth Tribe. Koleris Warbands and packs of Gek'roh run rampant across the remains of Vimary, and Westholm has become a fortified and isolated town. When the calm begins to fracture, and refugees arrive bringing news of war, the leaders of the Tribes and the Fallen must take arms again against distant enemies as well as those much closer to home.

Revanche is a complete cycle for Tribe 8. Its Quests and Acts chronicle the gathering-in of the Nation and the Fallen, and an end to three generations of Z'bri tyranny. Rising up in battle, the armies of the Nation and the Fall sweep across Vimary, taking back what is rightfully theirs. Revanche includes:

"Yes I know her. She is my sister. Upon the Wall she became blood-of-my-blood. That is what you can never understand, who were not there, every man and woman who stood upon the Wall is blood-of-my-blood. On the Wall we died and were reborn a new Tribe."

-- Alya the Knife, speaking of Yasmin Luther'on

The Liberation that began with the fall of the H'l Kar spreads out, catching all of humanity up in a war against their greatest enemy -- the Z'bri of Capal. For the first time since the World Before, humanity stands united and ready to take back their lives, their spirits and their world. Now is the time of Prophecy, and now is the time of the Eighth Tribe.

Liberation is the concluding volume of the Conquest Cycle, bringing the epic story of the Fallen and Tribals' conflict with the nations of Z'bri to an epic close. Five Quests detail the War of Liberation against Capal: The City of Hate, and the new alliances and enemies that will shape the future of the world. This sourcebook contains:

Five full Quests, and dozens of hooks for further adventure;

Many new NPCs, beasts and Totems;

New information on Boarhead's Confederation, the Sanjon Keepers and a glimpse of the Mistresses of Hattan.

Liberation is Part Five and the culmination of the Conquest story arc.

"To stand here, in this city, is to be overwhelmed by destiny. It means realizing what the Eighth Tribe is truly capable of and the raw potential each of us has locked in her soul. It means embracing tomorrow for all that it is: dizzying heights as well as shattering setbacks. To be in Capal is to fulfill prophesy."

-- Alienor of the Clarion of Destiny

The Capal Book of Days is the core sourcebook for Tribe 8's new setting, the Rising Star of Capal. The city is detailed in all its promise, glory and danger, providing a wealth of opportunities and ideas for cycles set in the new center of the Known World. Capal provides an excellent opportunity to begin a new chapter in your Tribe 8 game, with new characters taking the place of the old, or as the first installment for new Player Circles.

This book includes:

a history of the Nation of the Fall since its inception after the Liberation of Capal, told by those who created it

details of the city, from august High Town and the slums of Low Town to the bustling Waterfront, and then beyond the walls to the lands outside, from the dangerous Spires to the suburban Riverside

numerous maps of the city, and a dazzling new look at the Known World
snapshots of the powerful Cells of the Eighth Tribe that control the destiny of the new world

expanded character generation to allow Players the option to make Tribals, Keepers, Squats, Serfs and Children of the Eighth Tribe

Your mother wants you dead. Your brother is afflicted by a terrible curse. Your father has been missing ever since your uncle took his throne. There are strange men wandering through your estates, turning up your worst secrets. The Senate is meeting in scant weeks, and your sources tell you that they'll discuss invalidating your claim to your lands.

And you thought your life was complicated enough when you were using just the corebook!

Coronets but Never Crowns is the Family and Politics expansion for Houses of the Blooded that shows you how to let loose your powerful, passionate ven on the world of feudal politics... and vice-versa. The expansion features six new rules modules which can be added singly or in any combination, including:

Family, which turns your ven's family into a vicious, scheming nightmare that loves you very, very much and only wants what's "best" for you.

Peers, which shows you how to create new ven nobles and vassals on the fly as you play -- no need to prep NPCs when you can invent them in play!

Fealty, which details the myriad complexities of feudal contracts, expectations, and loopholes just waiting for exploitation by PCs and NPCs alike.

The Senate, which takes you to Davfanna Aldrena, the Hub of All Revenge, to dive into the ven's most hallowed and dangerous organization.

Vashna and Horse, which peels back the veil on the House of the Horse and its terrible crimes of serving the greater good... and how they still work in secret today.

Coronets Character Creation, an alternate way to create characters that unlocks opportunities to play vassals, lieges, and suaven priests.

This is an expansion to John Wick's game, Houses of the Blooded. It requires the corebook to play.

Pay What You Want

Click now to see Coronets but Never Crowns as a Pay-What-You-Want download at DriveThruRPG.com.

This sourcebook includes a lot of the rules options that didn't make it into the core Smallville Roleplaying book, including running secret agents and... kids with elemental-based superpowers they key into via kung fu, let's say. It's a little kitchen sinky, but there's lots of fun tools and toys.

Unfortunately, it's...

Out of Print

Sadly, Watchtower Report and Smallville Roleplaying are no longer available through retail channels. Click now to see the Cortex+ Hacker's Guide, which lists this game as "Cortex+ Drama."

Heart of the Union

The Progenitors hid far more depth than anyone, Tradition or Technocrat, realized. Too long considered by others -- and even themselves -- as lab monkeys and cloistered researchers, their protective cocoon of isolation was ripped away by the Dimensional Anomaly. Forced by cataclysmic events, the Progenitors are injecting themselves back into a sick world.

The Union's surgeons and chemists have made their diagnosis, and it scares them: the Technocracy's diseased and about to tear itself apart. Traditions keep peddling snake oil treatments to a populace yearning for an easy fix. And there are worse things out there, cancers on the world. So the Progenitors must take the only sensible action: arm up and prep the OR.

A World Infected

The Masses are gobbling up the ideas behind biotechnology, medical advancements, cloning, and neurochemistry -- nearly everything from the Convention's bag of tricks. But the world is still full of scared people looking for magic pills to make all their problems go away. The members of the Technocracy are no different. But now the Progenitors are in the mix, frantic trauma surgeons elbow--deep in unwilling patients. Convention Book: Progenitors updates Mage: the Ascension with 21st century medicine, biotech, and desperate idealism.

Advocate to the Masses

Of everyone in the Ascension War -- Traditionalists, Nephandi, and even other Technocrats -- no one gets humanity quite like the Syndicate. The Convention of Cash doesn't try to change people, and it doesn't have the hubris of believing it should make the Masses "better" as its fellow Conventions do. No, the Syndicate knows that the status quo keeps the world safe... and keeps them in the penthouse. The Syndicate distributes money and Primal Energy through the Technocratic Union, and that gives it power over the Union's policies. But that might not be enough to prevent the New World Order and others from crippling the Masses worse than the Traditions ever could.

A World Occupied

Between the lows -- hypereconomics backlash and market crashes -- and the highs -- crowdfunding and the reputation economy -- this is an interesting time to be in the Syndicate. Convention Book: Syndicate updates Mage: the Ascension with fresh 21st century ideas of the Convention everyone loves to despise, in ways that will change how you see them.

THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE ENLIGHTENED

The Void Engineers are hiding something. They've traded many of their ideals for guns, turned vessels of peaceful exploration into mobile defense platforms, and -- most frightening to the Union -- forged themselves into an organized military. They've kept the rest of the Technocracy grounded as they fight a mysterious war beyond the boundaries of Earth against adversaries too heinous to name.

As much as that's tearing the Technocratic Union apart, that's the only way it can be: only the Void Engineers can defend Consensual Reality from horrors beyond. For only they can stand before what lurks out there, hungry to return to Earth.

A WORLD UNDER SIEGE

The world beyond Earth has changed much in fifteen years, and not just from the Dimensional Anomaly. The Engineers have been forced to adapt to a Void growing ever darker. Convention Book: Void Engineers updates Mage: the Ascension with fresh 21st century ideas of the starfaring Convention -- once filled with hopeful explorers and rebellious dreamers, now scarred by their secret war.

I was a contributor on this title.

Click now to see Convention Book: Void Engineers at DriveThruRPG.com.

Fiction

Rooksbridge is a serialized fantasy novel I wrote chapter-by-chapter and am now in the process of reshaping into a proper novel. It's got swords and sorcery, politics and intrigue, family and idealism and all that good stuff.

Click through to download the first chapter, Dirty Work, to get a taste.

Down a lonely alleyway, under a starless sky, lies a city that never was, yet is: the Mad City, where nightmares walk the streets, and a good night's sleep can get you killed.

Here, then, is a book from that place. Within these recovered pages are the tales of the Awake, insomniacs who've walked those perilous streets, bringing a bit of the power of dream with them to fight back the night--always at a terrible cost.

For many, it will not end well. For a few, they might just become heroes--or at least find their way back home.

For you, a choice. Turn away. Don't read this book. And maybe you'll continue to rest easy. Or open the cover and enter a world unlike any you've ever dared to imagine...

Edited by Chuck Wendig and featuring the stories of...

Stephen Blackmoore

Harry Connolly

Rich Dansky

Matt Forbeck

Laura Anne Gilman

Will Hindmarch

Mur Lafferty

Robin D. Laws

Ryan Macklin

C. E. Murphy

Josh Roby

Greg Stolze

Monica Valentinelli

Click now to see Don't Read This Book at DriveThruRPG.com.

Scenarios & Stuff

This is a ready-to-go blood opera full of tragedy and histrionics for play with Houses of the Blooded. It's written in the tongue-and-cheek faux-scholarly tone of the core game, and contains a few setting elements such as Quarterhouses and proxy voting procedures for the Ven Senate.

The package includes six pregenerated characters already tied into the setting and each other's lives. The game can run with as few as two characters and as many as six.

Free Download

This is a ready-to-play con scenario that lets three to six players play Star Wars using Smallville Roleplaying or Cortex+ Drama.

The dictator of Hoth is beset on all sides as Jedi, gangsters, diplomats, and assassin droids descend on his otherwise peaceful private kingdom. They all have agenda that he hardly understands, because they're not here for him. They're here for his young daughter, who has exhibited surprising talent with the Force.

This package also includes alternate rules for Montages and Flashbacks.

Free Download

This is a pack of "half-gen" characters that lets three to six players jump right into the world of the Tribe 8 RPG published by Dream Pod 9. Players take up the roles of Vimary's movers and shakers: Troy Fenys, Deus, Altara Ven, Hal Ninva, and others.

These characters are built to use Smallville Roleplaying (otherwise known as Cortex+ Drama).

Free Download

These are my con scenarios for running Full Light, Full Steam at the drop of a hat. The package includes four scenarios, each set on a different planet, and a set of "half-gen" characters that players can customize to their liking before beginning play.